Ryogoku Area

You can spend hours zooming in with binoculars on the intricate models of Old Tokyo life at the Edo-Tokyo Museum.

Ryogoku is where we’ll go to see sumo wrestlers and my favorite museum in Tokyo – the sumo stadium and the Edo-Tokyo Museum are both right next to Ryogoku Station. If you’re lucky enough to be in Tokyo during the three 14-day sumo tournaments of the year, it’s not to be missed. Details on dates & tickets here. But if you’re not in Tokyo at tournament time, we can still see wrestlers going about their daily business in Ryogoku. They often take the train, and you can spot them easily by their size and the fact that they never wear western clothes.

Wrestlers doing the ritual salute before the tournament begins.Watching a sumo match is like nothing you’ve ever seen, anywhere.

Now let’s head over to my favorite museum in town: the Edo-Tokyo Museum. Half the museum is about everyday life in the Edo Era (during the time of the shōguns, before Japan opened to the West) and half of the museum is about life in the Meiji Era (after 1868, including fascinating info about life in Japan during WWII).

Instead of boring pictures, they use intricate models to show every aspect of town life. You could look at them for hours, and still find new things to see.This is the old Echizen kimono emporium – now it’s the Mitsukoshi flagship department store, in Nihonbashi.Here’s what that model looks like from the inside. Amazing, huh?You can get an idea of how large these models are. Each figure is about 2″ tall.There’s a room that explains everything about kabuki theatre (including an animated model of special effects). This is one of the fantastic costumes worn by male kabuki actors who play women’s roles.

And on the Meiji Era side…

This is a life-sized construction of a typical World War II-era room, showing how ordinary people lived during wartime. For example, that big saké bottle is filled with unhusked rice. The stick poking out the top was threshed around inside to get the hulls off before cooking.This is the model of the post-war black market near Shinjuku Station. The figures are about 3″ high.

Open: Six days a week, closed Mondays, on the day after national holidays, and from December 29 – January 3. Open other holidays.